Now Google wants to own your bedside, starting with this Lenovo alarm clock

CES 2019: Google has its own take on the Echo Spot

The tit-for-tat battle between Google and Amazon shows no signs of slowing, with the Big G now bringing the fight to the Echo Spot.

Google's launching a new category of smart alarm clocks at CES 2019, the first of which comes from Lenovo. This dinky little bedside clock is a shrunken down Google Smart Display, showing you the time, weather etc, and letting you interact with the Google Assistant.

The UI is generally (and understandably) more bare than Google's Smart Displays, but there are some differences in the features too, such as different clock faces and the lack of Home View, which on other Smart Displays will give you an overview of all your connected devices.

This is Google's take on the Echo Dot, but the company suggested that there will be more smart alarms coming in the future. As for Lenovo's, this thing has a 4-inch, 800√ó480 touchscreen and a 1.5-inch 6W speaker. It won't be great for blasting music, but it will charge your phone with its rear USB port. Handy. It's also covered in that familiar cloth to signify its membership to the Google Home family.

Lenovo already as a Google Smart Display on the market, but many people don't like the idea of putting a camera in their bedrooms. The Google Home Hub did away with the camera entirely, and Lenovo's Smart Clock does the same, earning it privacy points out the gate.

The Lenovo Smart Clock ships this spring for $79.99, and I'm more than a little interested. Right now I have the Google Home Hub on my bedside table and it already works great as an alarm clock. I love the idea of something smaller that still lets me run my Google Routines with the Assistant - and still blasts me out of bed in the morning.